RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/05/why-trump-haters-have-set-their-sights-on-j-d-vance/

The Progressive Left has a bullseye on J. D. Vance. Ever since he announced his run for the U.S. Senate in Middletown, Ohio last week to replace retiring Republican Rob Portman, the media has been bashing him. The Daily Beast claims he’s “an avatar of GOP corruption” and is upset that he mentioned Jeffrey Epstein and John Weaver as sex predators (the author says that’s a QAnon conspiracy!), while New York magazine says Vance’s campaign “feels doomed” less than 24 hours after he made his announcement speech in front of a pumped-up crowd of around 500.  

The liberal press is joined in its opposition to Vance by the anti-Trump ex-Republicans at the Lincoln Project, which spent close to $100 million against Trump last year. Bill Kristol and a list of other D.C.-based Trump haters have spent the days since his announcement calling Vance a “dirtbag” and a racist for using horrible terms like “nation-state.”

These same people have said almost nothing about Vance’s opponents in the Republican primary. Josh Mandel doesn’t seem to interest them, despite some warning signs about his candidacy—including the fact that much of his fundraising team resigned—or questions about his electability since he was trounced in his 2012 Senate race against far-left Sherrod Brown. 

Likewise, they haven’t had much to say about his other competitor Jane Timken, the former chairman of the state GOP. She, too, has some serious political problems, including defending her protégé, Ohio Representative Anthony Gonzalez’s vote to impeach Donald Trump and the fact that her family’s steel company outsources Ohio jobs to China.

So why are they so focused on J. D. Vance? Fox News host Tucker Carlson seems to like him, which probably only adds fuel to the fire. He said last week, “I’m really glad you’re doing it. J. D. Vance, I admire you and I wish you luck.”

Still, there’s a political angle that probably makes the anti-Trump contingent’s silence strategic: they realize the other candidates’ flaws make them weaker in the general election against Representative Tim Ryan, the likely Democratic nominee, and they would like to see the Democrats pick up what should be a safe Republican seat in the Senate.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/07/05/james-clyburn-yeah-im-open-to-voter-id-n2592029

Was it a dream? Is it our imagination? What happened? Voter ID requirements were long considered facets of white supremacy and of Republicans wanting to suppress to vote. This was Jim Crow 2.0, remember? For years, voter ID requirements were popular. Across geographic, political, and racial lines, the act of showing a photo ID to vote was met with overwhelming approval. So, are Democrats listening now? This was an interesting admission from top Democrat Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) (via CNN):

James Clyburn, a member of House Democratic leadership, said Sunday he was “absolutely” open to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s proposed changes to election law reform that include a voter ID requirement — as long as it’s equitable.

“We are always for voter ID. We are never for disproportionate voter ID. When you tell me that you got to have a photo ID and a photo for a student activity card is not good but for a hunting license it is good,” Clyburn, the House majority whip, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” I don’t know of a single person who is against ID’ing themselves when they go to vote. But we don’t want you to tell me my ID is no good because I don’t own a gun and I don’t go hunting.”

The comments from the South Carolina Democrat, who has previously criticized voter ID requirements as a form of voter suppression, comes days after the Supreme Court ruled two provisions of an Arizona voting law that restrict how ballots can be cast do not violate the Voting Rights Act. After Senate Republicans blocked a path forward on an elections reform bill and as GOP-led state legislatures move to enact restrictive voting laws, Democrat lawmakers are also calling for action, including ending the filibuster.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/drop-the-georgia-election-lawsuit-11625517739?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Attorney General Merrick Garland is the front-runner so far for 2021’s bad timing prize. The Justice Department last month rushed out a lawsuit claiming that Georgia’s new election law violates Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act only days before the Supreme Court laid down standards that make the lawsuit a nearly certain loser.

Justice knew the likely timing of the Court’s ruling in Brnovich v. DNC, so a fair guess is that Mr. Garland succumbed to White House and progressive pressure to make a political statement to support Democratic efforts in Congress to federalize state election laws in H.R.1.

Bad call. Now federal judges hearing the case will have to contend with Justice Samuel Alito’s five principles in Brnovich as they assess the Georgia statute.

It won’t be easy to find legal fault under those principles. Mere voting inconvenience can’t be considered disqualifying, since all voting imposes some inconvenience. Any specific voting provision, such as the number of drop boxes, must also be considered in the overall context of a state’s voting rules. Georgia’s rules are generally lenient and don’t especially burden the ability of minorities to vote.

Perhaps Justice can find a federal judge somewhere to rule against Georgia, but such a ruling is unlikely to survive on appeal to higher courts. The legal and political result of the lawsuit is therefore likely to vindicate Georgia Republicans during the 2022 election season or leading up to 2024, depending on how the lawsuits proceed. Mr. Garland would be wise to drop the suit in light of Brnovich, lest his term at Justice be marred by the continuation of this patently political lawsuit.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/07/02/supreme-court-arizona-election-law-georgia-merrick-garland/7825500002/

With its decision Thursday in the voting rights case of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court closed its term with a decision that will resonate not just legally but politically for years to come.

The 6-3 decision upheld Arizona’s new voting rules in Arizona over claims of racial discrimination. While the court said it would be imprudent to create a sweeping rule for all future such cases, it was equally imprudent for the Biden administration to ignore the forthcoming decision in filing a new challenge to Georgia’s new voting rights. The lawsuit against Georgia’s new voting rules was clearly timed to beat the court to the punch, but Brnovich delivers a haymaker for those seeking to block such state laws. Indeed, the decision magnifies the concern that the Georgia challenge is more of a political than a legal statement from the Biden administration.

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito upheld two new voting rules in Arizona that barred “harvesting” of votes by political groups and discarded ballots cast in the wrong precinct. The lower courts divided on the question. Some rejected the discrimination claims. However, the Ninth Circuit reheard the case and struck down the provisions. Alito rejected claims that such laws are presumptively racist and more narrowly construed the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids restrictions that abridge the right to vote on account of race.

The Supreme Court agreed with a lower court that upheld the laws, that “the spark for the debate over mail-in voting may well have been provided by one Senator’s enflamed partisanship, but partisan motives are not the same as racial motives.”

Misinformation on Georgia voting law

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/ny_mayors_race_in_chaos_as_135000_extra_votes_show_up.html

Don’t you dare question the integrity of the 2020 presidential election because Democrats can always be trusted to run fair, honest and transparent elections. That’s the narrative and you’re expected to stick with it, even in the face of then nation’s biggest, richest, most sophisticated city obviously bungling the race to elect its next mayor.

It’s so blatant that even the New York Times recognizes the problem and applies the word “chaos.” Katie Glueck writes:

The New York City mayor’s race plunged into chaos on Tuesday night when the city Board of Elections released a new tally of votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, and then removed the tabulations from its website after citing a “discrepancy.”

The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric Adams and his two closest rivals had tightened significantly.

But just a few hours after releasing the preliminary results, the elections board issued a cryptic tweet revealing a “discrepancy” in the report, saying that it was working with its “technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nyc-mayoral-race-in-disarray-after-discrepancy-prompts-withdrawal-of-ranked-choice-results/ar-AALBkAu?li=BBnb7Kz

The error-prone Board of Elections hurled the city’s first-ever ranked-choice mayoral race into disarray Tuesday by releasing updated results showing Eric Adams’ lead in the contest shrinking drastically — only to withdraw those tabulations due to an unspecified voting “discrepancy” before calling it a night.

The BOE first dropped a tally that showed Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, leading the Democratic mayoral primary with 51.1% of the vote after 11 rounds of ranked-choice counting eliminated all other candidates except for ex-sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

Under the new tally, Garcia had soared to second place with 48.9% of the vote — trailing Adams by just 15,908 ballots. That spelled potential trouble for Adams — who had enjoyed a nearly 10% lead before the ranked-choice process played out — and turned all eyes to tens of thousands of absentee ballots that won’t be tabulated for at least another week.

But hours after releasing the nail-biting updated results, the Board of Elections backtracked.

“We are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report. We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred,” the board wrote on Twitter. “We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience.”

After several more suspenseful hours, the BOE then deleted the flawed tabulations from its website and said it would not release corrected results until Wednesday.

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/new-lawsuit-challenges-ballot-drop

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a lawsuit Monday challenging ballot dropboxes and absentee ballot collections in Wisconsin.

The suit was filed just days after the Wisconsin Supreme Court side-stepped a legal challenge on the same questions.

“Wisconsin voters deserve certainty that elections are conducted fairly and in accordance with state law. But the Wisconsin Elections Commission is giving advice to clerks that is contrary to the law, putting the ballots of countless voters at risk,” WILL’s Rick Essenberg said.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-3 on Friday to dismiss a legal challenge to dropboxes and ballot harvesting. Swing justice Brian Hagedorn joined the court’s liberal justices in dismissing the claim for technical reasons.

WILL’s lawsuit pushes the question again.

“Under [Wisconsin law] there are only two methods allowed for casting an absentee ballot: (1) the U.S. Mail, and (2) handing the envelope containing the ballot in person to the municipal clerk,” the lawsuit reads. “This requirement with respect to how to cast an absentee ballot must be read in conjunction with [another state law] which provides that no person may ‘receive a ballot from or give a ballot to a person other than the election official in charge.’”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/06/27/the-maricopa-county-audit-completed-paper-ballot-examination-heres-what-happens-next-n1457590

The forensic audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Ariz., has completed the counting and examination of paper ballots.

The Maricopa Arizona Audit Twitter account made the announcement Friday evening.

“Audit Update: Paper examination and counting are finished today,” read the tweet. “Thank you to all the amazing Arizona volunteers who made this audit possible!”

Washington Examiner: 

The announcement confirming the conclusion of the ballot inspection portion of the audit comes less than two weeks after auditors finished a recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Arizona’s most populous county, which includes Phoenix, with a few exceptions, such as Braille ballots.

The physical review of ballots included an inspection of their weight and thickness, examination of folds under microscopes, and workers holding ballots up to UV lights.

Towards the end of the process, workers were examining 100,000 ballots per day, the Maricopa Arizona Audit said in a tweet on Thursday.

The audit also included the capturing of information from voting machines, after which Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs,advised the county to replace its voting machines over concerns that the review compromised their “security and integrity“

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/election_integrity_the_firewall_that_keeps_america_free.html

During the last year and half it’s become obvious to anyone whose head is not in the sand that America has been under assault on multiple levels from within. There is no denying that the COVID-19 viral invasion was a catalyst for so much of the disruption of 2020, culminating in election irregularity in November.

By spring 2020, normal activities and businesses were largely shut down nationwide by federal and local governments’ response to COVID-19.  Antifa and BLM protests and riots in May and June brought the costliest manmade damage to American property in history. Then the cancel culture, already ensconced and in control of college and university campuses, came to the streets and parks of America in the tearing down historic monuments — all the while law enforcement was coming under severe attack with numerous police departments facing prospects of defunding.

This lockdown-crisis environment gave Democrats an opportunity to push for change in state election rules to their advantage, such as allowing wholesale distribution of mail-in ballots, extension of deadlines for counting those ballots, and legal challenges to voter ID and signature verification laws. And we all now know the result: the November 3rd election was characterized by unprecedented election irregularities and charges of vote fraud in more states than any prior election.

The confluence of all this has certainly brought on confusion for many Americans.  But a significant group of people believe they see things with clarity. Where I live in South Florida it’s an incredible melting pot of people — immigrants from all over the world. Many of my acquaintances and friends — from Eastern and Slavic Europe and Russia, Latin America, and Southeast Asia — have commented that what they see going on in America is a fairly classic communist-type subversion.  They believe that the takedown of America is well advanced and now poses a real threat to continuation of the United States as a free nation.  

My immigrant and refugee friends point out that the communist playbook is really quite easy to understand. Several who lived under communist systems commented that communist revolutionaries are masters at using false fronts, whether Critical Race Theory or social justice Marxist theories of wealth redistribution to advance their real objective which is one-party rule and total control of society. While my friends see this so clearly, they are dumbfounded and mystified that so many American people remain so naïve and passive in the face of cancel culture, censorship, and creeping cultural totalitarianism that is so obviously and rapidly redefining the country.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-lawsuit-against-georgia-election-law-illustrates-radicalism-of-doj-and-its-civil-rights-chief/

As our Caroline Downey reports, the Justice Department will today announce that it is suing Georgia over the latter’s election-integrity law. This is ridiculous. The law provides for voting far more extensive than the Constitution’s minimal standards, and well beyond what, about five minutes ago, were state-law norms. The lawsuit is yet another sign, as if we needed one, that the Biden Justice Department is the Obama DOJ 2.0, an activist tool that puts the awesome law-enforcement power of the federal government in the service of woke progressivism.

This is not a surprise, of course. The lawsuit will be brought by DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which Biden put in the radical hands of Kristen Clarke, for whose confirmation we can thank Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the lone Republican to assent. I wrote about Clarke when she was nominated:

At the all-important Civil Rights Division, Biden has appointed Kristen Clarke, a radical with a history of racist and anti-Semitic commentary. At Harvard, where she led the Black Students Association as an undergrad, Clarke publicly contended that blacks were superior to whites physically and mentally because their brains contain higher amounts of neuro-melanin. Blacks are also spiritually superior, she said, though she elaborated that this is not an attribute that can be “measured based on Eurocentric standards.”

Though she does not exactly come off like a career in stand-up was an option, Clarke would like us to believe that she was just joking — resorting to parody in her umbrage over the publication of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve. People seemed to think she was pretty serious at the time, as she took pains to cite Richard King, a psychiatrist and melanin/pineal-gland scholar, as authority for the proposition that melanin is “the chemical basis for the cultural differences between blacks and whites,” and the reason why “Black infants sit, crawl and walk sooner than whites.” (C’mon, you know you were wondering!) On a related subject, Clarke certainly seemed serious when she invited a notoriously anti-Semitic Trinidadian academic, Tony Martin, to expound on his theories about the racism of the Torah and the “Jewish monopoly over Blacks” — and when she later asserted, in his defense, “Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact.”